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Could Electrically Stimulating Criminals' Brains Prevent Crime? (newatlas.com)
future guy shares a report from New Atlas: A new study by a team of international researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Nanyang Technological University suggests that electrically stimulating the prefrontal cortex can reduce the desire to carry out violent antisocial acts by over 50 percent. The research, while undeniably compelling, raises a whole host of confronting ethical questions, not just over the feasibility of actually bringing this technology into our legal system, but whether we should?
The intriguing experiment took 81 healthy adults and split them into two groups. One group received transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for 20 minutes, while the other placebo group received just 30 seconds of current and then nothing for the remaining 19 minutes. Following the electrical stimulation all the participants were presented with two vignettes and asked to rate, from 0 to 10, how likely they would be to behave as the protagonist in the stories. One hypothetical scenario outlined a physical assault, while the other was about sexual assault. The results were fascinating, with participants receiving the tDCS reporting they would be between 47 and 70 percent less likely to carry out the violent acts compared to the blind placebo control.
The intriguing experiment took 81 healthy adults and split them into two groups. One group received transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for 20 minutes, while the other placebo group received just 30 seconds of current and then nothing for the remaining 19 minutes. Following the electrical stimulation all the participants were presented with two vignettes and asked to rate, from 0 to 10, how likely they would be to behave as the protagonist in the stories. One hypothetical scenario outlined a physical assault, while the other was about sexual assault. The results were fascinating, with participants receiving the tDCS reporting they would be between 47 and 70 percent less likely to carry out the violent acts compared to the blind placebo control.
I mean...?
Not sure how they can prove that the result is not that a 30-second shock and 19 mins of boredom didn't cause an uptick in criminal tendencies...
The higher the current the peaceful of the subjects. Over a certain range efectivity is 100%
In a number of Larry Niven sci-fi novels, there are people addicted to brain stimulation, known as "wireheads".
It's called "electric chair". Pump enough watts into the brain and they don't commit crimes anymore. Works like a charm
You just need to have 100% accuracy in detecting that they are indeed criminals and sufficiently strong current.
No more re-offending
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I'd like to try it.
Brilliant!
Next thing you know, they'll be putti g fluoride in the water.
A coarse version of the experiment has been running in several countries for some time. Subjects never incide again.
As I recall, we tried the electroshock therapy thing a long time ago.
It worked, if you defined "worked" to include "turned them into vegetables". Somehow, I doubt that that's what TFA had in mind though....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The sample is too small and too biased. The right way to test is to take ALL the inmates convicted of violent crime in jail. Divide them into two groups, and give them transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) . Then watch their behavior. Once you prove definitively this things helps make peaceful society, we can extend this to the general population.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Provide them with all the movies and media they want, VR, games, etc and they will forget about reality and lose interest in other people, having sex, having a family, about all the restrictive laws they have allowed themselves to be boxed into for their own good and safety.
Now compare those individuals to both the control and active groups in this study.
Eggiwegs. I would like to smash 'em. And pick em all up... and
Lethal Injection is how you put a dog down not an man.
Most violent crimes are committed under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.
Absent that, the experiment would be useless.
I'm pretty sure we established in the 40's and 50's an ice pick in that region would do the same thing.
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This is assuming that there is a chemical imbalance in the brain and I honestly think it is barking up the wrong tree. Criminality and the reasons people commit crimes are far more complex. Also American society has so many ways to get tripped up by the system that the average person actually commits 3 felonies a day without really knowing that they've done so and these are basically law abiding people. Harry Silvergate published a book on his study about this. The title of the book is Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.
Next step is to get a statistically large enough sample of prison population in death row that also suffers from psychopathy (or something like that) to volunteer for brain pacemaker installations. We don't want to test on the population that had valid reasons to commit their murders, after all.
To keep them out of crime instead?
If you stimulate them "vigorously" enough then definitely yes, you can prevent crime and reduce overpopulation at the same time!
I propose an experiment where we use electrical stimulation on the gonads of politicians to see if it can reduce corruption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Recall_(1990_film)
A problem in this report is that electrocuting anyone is likely to suppress their desire to do Anything. Good or bad. So while interesting subject the test is hardly scientific without a factor that shows their activity level, and probably more specifically with other people.
I bet one would find them reaching less for human interaction, other than maybe seeking safety.
Do a study where they electrically "stimulate" their reproductive organs. I'm curious what the results would be in that case.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
This is how The Terminal Man started... I don't think we want that to actually come true.
Expect to see a..."dynamic" definition of what constitutes a "criminal."
Put about 13800 volts and I'm sure it will stop the next crime
I mean, didn't we do this to criminals ( and "insane" ) back in the early 1900s?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The problem is really that there's some socially accepted group think that says people have 'criminal urges' they cannot control. Rather than cognitive human beings that have made personal choices based on a lifetime of experiences.
It's almost as though society says 'these people are criminals because they are broken', rather than taking personal responsibility and understanding society puts a huge amount of emphasis on conflicting standards of behavior, conduct and goal setting.
tl;dr
People are inherently good, there's only so much bullshit a person can take.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Why present those scenarios? What about more positive scenarios e.g.
rescuing a kitten from a tree, or a chick that may have fallen from the nest?
- Over half the subjects were woman ( They don't tend to carry out violent attacks).
- The study studies intent, not action ( Maybe females intend violent actions but don't actually carry them out which would skew the real life applications).
- Morally wrongful is a social construct which could mean the experiment actually reinforces existing social constructs (What about in a time of war when the construct is that the enemy are monsters, or gay people are evil, African Americans are thugs, and Arabs are terrorists?) .
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Stimulate hard enough and they'll never commit a crime again. Guaranteed!
So we can reduce violent antisocial acts. Elimination that should reduce crime by about 1 percent.
Call me unimpressed. Let me know when they can reduce the majority of crime by eliminating the desire to illegally immigrate, drive over the speed limit, and drinking a beer while mowing your lawn on your ride on mower.
They should start with the worst criminals: bankers, lawyers and politicians.
In the book Wisdom of Psychopaths the author mentions trying an experiment where current was passed through subjects' brains which removed their empathy and impulse control. It made people more likely to gamble, cheat on their partners, and engage in selfish or violent behaviour.
Though he didn't go into the study and its implications further, it got me wondering if the reverse could be applied. If you can stimulate the brain to turn someone into a psychopath for something like 20-60 minutes, could you do the reverse and turn a psychopath into an empathetic, restrained person?
That was a few years ago now, but it seems these researchers were working with the same reversing concept. If it can be applied in a more wide-spread way it could pose a way to reintroduce previously incurable violent offenders back into society.
I bet that would work! And I would volunteer for the first tests! Actually, I'm already testing a system as I type this.... oh. yeah.
dead man walking the green mile
Don't let them out/go/live. Take your pick...
We call it the electric chair
Could electrically stimulating Slashdot poster's brains prevent a non-stop stream of conjectural fluff instead of useful information?
While by no means an expert, I have done a little bit of work with folks doing research with tCDS as a learning/awareness enhancement technique so I'd just like to like to correct some misconceptions I see being thrown around here. All the following should also be taken with the caveat that I personally find applying any kind of psychoactive therapy to an unwilling subject or someone whose agency has been been restricted and is unable to freely give consent (e.g. prisoners) reprehensible.
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South Park the Movie has already shown us the danger of using electricity to curb aberrant behavior.
My father would tell a story about growing up in the 1930â(TM)s in a poor coal town when the electric chair was popular as a means of execution.
Whenever the switch was thrown, lights in the entire town dimmed. Over time, the frequency of these dimming reduced and not because of improved infrastructure.
So, yeah, large doses of electrical stimulation to the brains of offenders can reduce crime rates.
proper education, clean, lead free drinking water and decent paying jobs stops crime. The number of criminally insane people is minuscule. Crap like this is just an excuse not to do the hard work of solving root causes.
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Sincerely,
V. Frahnkensteen
I think it was called "The Green Mile".
... let's embed some electricity in opioids and stuff.
Many crimes are drug-related, and if that works, we can migrate that shit to meth, pot, Facebook, and other mind-altering substances.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I'd like to be ethically stimulated as well!
I propose a government program paying good wages to all women/men/(invented genders) for providing ethical stimulation to our citizen.
The boost to citizen happiness and reduction in crime rates should more than offset the cost of paying ethical wages to our new government workers.
P.S. Please, think of all the children that will be saved by the reduction in crime rates alone!
The only question is how many amps is needed.
Given that it is a proven fact that job insecurity and lack of a job directly relates to family violence, what would be the result of offering people JOBS that paid enough to live on (as opposed to ones that required you to work two or three jobs, 18 or more hours a day, just to get by)?
And libertarian idiots, how can you afford bootstraps, when the multinationals undercut your businesses and drive you under (can you say Walmart)?
But if you give a convicted criminal the choice between "Wear this estim hat" or "go to jail for 10 years", you're not violating their right to bodily integrity, are you?
No thanks
But if you give a convicted criminal the choice between "Wear this estim hat" or "go to jail for 10 years", you're not violating their right to bodily integrity, are you?
Having such a choice would mean more severe sentencing in order to coerce people to wear the hat.
The device is called an electric chair. It stops that violent anti-social behavior permanently as well as stopping the perp.
How long until this becomes something that is court ordered..?
-Myke
You can even do it at home!
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
I can't download the full PDF of the study, but there are at least 2 things missing from the description in the news.
First, their results are based on a verbal report of what a person says he/she would do in a situation. This is completely different from what a person might actually do in real life.
Second, they haven't shown that the effect is specific to violent intent. Maybe the brain stimulation also reduces their (reported) desire to do anything active, like exercise, or eat cake, or go scuba diving. The prefrontal cortex has many functions.
Before you claim that a particular part of the brain is "for" any particular purpose, you have to pass a high bar.
There's no proof that this will make any lasting changes. It could be something like the effects of meditation - good for max. a couple of hours, but as soon as the thought patterns go back to their old ways the jig is up. Is the proposal that potential criminals would need to wear electrode headbands 24/7?
I recommend reading "The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson (author of "The Men Who Stare at Goats", among others). There was a lot of success in the 60s and 70s(? if I recall correctly) with using psychedelic drugs along with group therapy to treat such conditions, but it turns out as soon as the inmates faced the outside world (once more not only without the drugs but without any compassionate support network), the old behavior patterns came back with a vengeance.
My takeaway is that someone diagnosed as a sociopath is not necessarily biologically predestined to be that way - their "different" brain activity is potentially as much a result of their thought processes as the other way around. Just as in the case of drug addicts (see Johanm Hari's book "Chasing the Scream"), there is plenty of evidence to suggest that social factors and destructive thought processes are the root cause and that treating criminals with compassion rather than the opposite is key to changing their thought patterns and thus their behavior.
Unfortunately policy makers and institutional psychiatrists by and large don't want to consider such viewpoints - they want a quick band-aid to the problem and a reason to keep the prison-industrial-complex chugging along, not to mention most people have been brainwashed to see criminals as "bad", animals who are hardly worthy of basic human rights.
So no compulsory vaccinations?
google "Old Sparky"
No, it can't. Plus, why would you want to simulate US presidents', CIA directors, generals and investment bankers' brains? It's bad enough they operate in the original heads.
"Could Electrically Stimulating Criminals' Brains Prevent Crime?"
This has been proven to be true empirically. There has never been a case of recidivism once Ole Sparky gets done with em.
Yes, now that we have DNA testing to confirm the guilt of rapists, molesters, and murderers, we need to double down on executions of dangerous scum.
It is barbaric and dangerous to let such live.
I think I've seen this movie
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I wouldn't commit too many crimes either if someone electrocuted me!
I tend to rant.
Thinking (and generating electricity to the brain) reduces crime...
Well, DUH!
You crank the power up high enough.
"God! He smells like a pig roast! His entire head caught fire!"
"But he won't commit any more crimes now!"
"Why not just shoot him!"
"Because that would be inhumane..."
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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Since we've already got a Gulag, might as well get some productive use out of it. I say toss these mad doctors behind this barbaric "research" into the Gulag and throw away the key.
Creimertards sure do have a lot of perverted sexual fantasies about creimer.
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>> Could Electrically Stimulating Criminals' Brains Prevent Crime?
With enough amps it sure will prevent further crime.
Proved to work since 1890
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
aaaaaaa
Could Electrically Stimulating Researchers' Brains Prevent Brain Damage in Others?
Requiem for the American Dream
This is eerily like the whole lobotomy craze in the orphanages of the early 1900s. I guess we're doomed to always repeat our evils. Next thing you know will bring back internment camps like we did with the Japanese in WWII. Oh wait. Yeh.
Yes, now that we have DNA testing to confirm the guilt of rapists, molesters, and murderers, we need to double down on executions of dangerous scum.
It is barbaric and dangerous to let such live.
Spoken like someone who has never had consensual sex redefined to rape because the women came to regret it later when you wouldn't answer her calls.
Sperm is in her? Yes. She said it's rape, he said it was consensual? Well tough luck, a woman can redefine any sex as rape at any point in time for any reason.
When a woman knows she can get any man killed just by having sex with him to completion, guess what will happen?
Your idea is barbaric.